The Simplest Advice to Improve SEO

Search engine optimization is one of the hottest topics in digital marketing because search engines, such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo!, drive a majority of a company’s traffic to its website. The more traffic a website receives, the greater volume of impressions it makes. Whether the site is for ecommerce, blogging, social media, or any other purpose, every single website aims to be “seen” by visitors to the Internet. SEO helps bring relevant pages to the top of search results lists, so that they are seen by web users looking for something in particular. Read on to learn more about how SEO works, and to find valuable advice to improve SEO and increase the visibility of your own webpages.

Core Components of SEO

Successful SEO occurs when intentional work is put forth to improve a website’s structure and quality of content to provide a better user experience. The core components of SEO include:

Meta tags

Title tags and meta descriptions

Content

Localization

Meta tags and descriptions, along with title tags, are clues built into a website that let search engines know what each webpage is about. They are generally embedded into code or other platform configurations, so they are not necessarily seen by Internet users, only by search engine scrolls. Content, however, is the actual “stuff” available for users to see – the reason why they visit a particular webpage! The content on a page should match its tagged keywords in order to be best optimized. Localization is just one more strategy to optimize search engine results; localization narrows down the viewers who are most likely interested in a website’s content.

How Search Engines Rank Webpages

Search engine algorithms use the core components of SEO to rank billions of pages across the Internet. Unfortunately, webmasters use this knowledge to develop ways of tricking search engines into ranking their pages higher and higher, regardless of true user value. These deceptive SEO practitioners stuff keywords into each of the components, creating content optimized for search engines and ranking systems rather than producing work that users will find interesting and genuinely valueable. For this reason, Google and other search engines must constantly improve their algorithms to more selectively rank webpages, closing SEO loopholes left and right. The goal of the Panda update in 2011 was to penalize “content farms” that simply aggregate articles and media which exist elsewhere on the Internet. On the other hand, Panda rewarded sites that create original content, and more recent algorithm updates, Penguin and Hummingbird, continue this shift toward “value-added” webpages ranking higher than unhelpful ones.

Advice to Improve SEO

The best way to solve your own website’s SEO issues (or to simply improve your search engine ranking) is to take a step back from any outdated ways of thinking and develop long-term strategies to improve your website’s usability. Short-term tricks and scams like paid link-building or keyword stuffing are destined to fail. The most important goal of Panda – and all search engines’ algorithm updates – was to provide a better user experience for those searching the Internet. Instead of dwelling on the fact that you are already trying to practice good SEO, re-evaluate your website’s objectives and focus on its primary target, keeping in mind that adding value to your pages will encourage users to return. Strive to create relevant and well-written content, and keep it consistent across all pages of your site. Your work will be well worth the effort, because it will satisfy the ever-evolving search engine requirements and will bring more traffic to your site. Good luck!